Bang Bang!

About a month ago, I went to Bonefish with one of my many fantastic supervisors from internship to celebrate the end of my non-gainful employment as an intern. We had the bang bang shrimp, and I should mention that I do not like spicy food nor do I like seafood. But I liked the bang bang shrimp. In anticipation of a fun weekend with my fam this weekend, I was thinking about some snacks and appetizers we could have and thought I'd attempt the BBS. It turned out great and I'll definitely be making it again! I looked around for copy-cat recipes, and I read about 6 and all of the zillions of comments of people who think their slight tweak makes the recipe INFINITELY better. It seemed like this recipe was the general consensus for the closest match, and Luke and I both really liked it. I think I was also drawn to the delicious looking martini in the picture.  Found it here: http://www.cdkitchen.com/recipes/recs/435/Bonefish-Grills-Bang-Bang-Shr108368.shtml

Just as a general warning, pan frying the shrimp was messy. Really messy. There was EVOO popping all over the place, and even after Swiffering, my kitchen floor is very soft and slippery. But, the shrimp was delicious, so I think it was worth it! I also think it would be really easy and just as delicious to buy some frozen popcorn shrimp and cut out that messy step. I'll probably do that when I make it this weekend to cut down on clean-up time with family around.

1/3 cup low-fat mayonnaise - you may want to go up to 1/2 cup depending on how creamy you want the shrimp to be. I just wanted a light coating.
1/3 cup Thai sweet chili sauce - I found this really easily in the Asian food section
5 drops Sriracha hot chili sauce - add more if you want it hotter
1 pound shrimp, de-veined, de-tailed
cornstarch
extra virgin olive oil - enough to coat the pan for frying
lettuce
lots of paper towels

Coat the shrimp in cornstarch and pan fry until they're golden brown. Remove them from the pan and put them on a plate for a couple of minutes before transferring them to a thick stack of paper towels to soak of some of the oil. Mix the mayo and chili sauces. Toss the shrimp in the sauce in a big bowl,  and serve it on a bed of lettuce. YUM!

Disclaimer: these are a bit hot. As we can gather from the pearls of wisdom from Modern Family: if your mouth is burning, do not drink water. Drink milk. Thanks, Cam.

Update

Well I haven't blogged in quite some time! So much has been going on for us here in Stafford. Back in April, I took the National Counselor Exam to be a Nationally Certified Counselor. It was a bear, and I'm anxiously awaiting the 8-week period until I get my results. I have since finished all my coursework for GWU, and I am graduating this weekend! It seems like this year has gone by so fast, and my loved every minute of my internship. I learned so much from this experience, and I loved being a part of people's exploration and discovery. It's really cool to see people learn things about themselves and develop faith in themselves, and I feel really thankful to all of those people for sharing that with me. Being the lover of multi-tasking that I am, I am still working on my M.Ed, and it's getting pretty challenging. There are so many things going on here for us, but I'm hanging in there and getting it done!

We recently found out last week that Luke got artillery for his MOS. We are really thrilled about this, and we are so excited to make our next move and meet people in the community. We'll be heading to Lawton, Oklahoma next - probably some time in July. We'll be there for about 5 months until heading out to a duty station to be named later. So as for now, we're just enjoying our time here in Stafford and hanging out with the amazing friends we've made here before we head in a different direction!